The day after the funeral, Leonard Yorke called at The Oaks, accompanied by Jessie Glyndon. She looked pale and sad; but that was no wonder, and created no comment. She had liked Mrs. Arleigh very much, and then Mrs. Yorke was still very ill, and that alone was sufficient to affect Miss Glyndon and make her pale and sad; and no one for a moment connected her sadness with dark-eyed Will Venners down in New Orleans.
When Leonard and Violet met there was a strange constraint between them. She thought that, perhaps, his call had been intended solely for Hilda; and he thought of that unfortunate poem until his heart grew hard and bitter. Ever before his mind there floated, in letters of fire, the words:
“And I said, ‘Love’s soul is not in fetters;
Neither time nor space can keep souls apart;
If I can not, dare not, send my letters,
Through the silence I will send my heart.’”
And so, the foolish fellow, half-wild with jealousy, treated Violet with cool reserve.
He could not return Will Venners’ poem to Violet, as he fully intended doing at the first opportunity; for at a time like this, just after her mother’s death, and Violet looking so pale and sad in her black dress, how could he intrude such a matter upon her notice?
So the poem remained untouched in his vest-pocket, where it seemed to burn into his very heart; while Violet, absorbed with her grief and her dark fears of the future before her, never thought of the poem at all.
But Leonard’s strange coldness cut her to the heart and nearly broke it. She felt actually relieved when at last the callers took their departure. She stood at the drawing-room window watching the pair ride away on horseback together, with a feeling of relief in her heart which was new to it.